The State of Open Access in Belgium’s
French-speaking Universities
François Renaville, BICfB / ULg
Open Access to Excellence in Research
BICfB…
•
BICfB = Bibliothèque Interuniversitaire de la Communauté française de Belgique
•
Non-profit organization created in 2000 by the Rectors of the French-speaking
universities (9 universities in 2000; 6 in 2012 [after mergings])
•
Aimed at promoting, coordinating and developing a common policy between
the university libraries regarding academic and scientific documentation
o consortial purchase of eProducts • ca 50 products for 2012
o 1 yearly project / study (e.g.: institutional repositories, Open Access, preservation and curation…)
•
Financed by the public authorities (65%) and the universities (35%)
•
Daily activities managed by a technical staff (1,5 FTE)
A Study on Open Access
•
Request from the Rectors and the F.R.S.-FNRS at the General Assembly (Spring
2011)
•
Aim: to take stock of OA development and projects in the universities, particularly
on:
1)
Institutional Mandates2)
Institutional Repositories (IRs) (Green Road)3)
Active implication of researchers & professors (with editorial role) in OA journals (Gold Road)•
Made between February and May 2012
•
Presented to the Rectors and the F.R.S.-FNRS
in June 2012
1)
Institutional Mandates for FT
PhD theses
Journal articles
Other document types
FUNDP
2008 / /FUSL
2005/2008 / /UCL
2005/2008 2008(application planned for 2013)
2008
(application planned for 2013)
ULB
2007 2007 2007ULg
2006 2007 /UMONS
/ / /F.R.S.-FNRS
/• Publications must be referenced in the IRs (recommendation, mandatory 2013 for some researchers)
• No mandate for the FT in the IRs
2)
Green Road
•
Two projects:
o
BICTEL/e (2001-2003): PhD theses and e-prints
oInstitutional Repositories (2004-2008)
•
Institutional Repositories:
o
250,000 archived references (beginning of March 2012) :
• ca 33,000 references with an OA FT (13,2%)
• ca 49,000 references with a FT in restricted access (19,6%)
o
Very contrasting situation :
• No systematic FT deposit in all institutions
Total References in the IRs
0 10.000 20.000 30.000 40.000 50.000 60.000 70.000 80.000 90.000FUNDP FUSL UCL ULB ULg UMONS
Number of references
Number of references with FT
Evolution of the “big” 3 IRs
Beginning of March 2012 0 10.000 20.000 30.000 40.000 50.000 60.000 70.000 80.000 90.000 100.000 110.000UCL ULB ULg
Mid-October 2012
References with a FT in Open Access
52% 15% 12% 6% 6% 2% 2% 0% 5%Academic journal articles [n=17.226] Book chapters [n=4.797] Unpublished communications [n=3.793] Dissertations [n=2.073] Working papers [n=1.862] Reports [n=621] Books [n=604] Patents [n=125] Others [n=1.665]
by document type
See p. 27 of the report
Total: 32,766 references
0 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000 6.000 7.000 8.000 9.000
UCL ULB ULg UMONS
Journal articles published between 2009 and 2011
in the IRs and in Scopus
IRs Scopus
Better visibility of the scholarly production of the universities
Journal articles
Also for more discrete publication types (working papers, e-prints,
reports, patents…) (7% of all IRs)
P. 37 of the report
IRs & Scopus
Downloads from all IRs
194.345 491.609 670.000 0 100.000 200.000 300.000 400.000 500.000 600.000 700.000 800.000 2010 2011 2012 (estimated)3)
Gold Road
No inter-university project at the time being
•
PEPS project (BICfB, 2004):
• PEPS = Portail Électronique de Périodiques Scientifiques • = common platform for OA publishing of academic journals
• study made on behalf of Minister Fr. Dupuis, but no funding for development
•
Only local initiatives:
o Iconothèque ULB (2002)• 4,000 images and pictures for teaching and research o PoPuPS at ULg (2005)
• Platform for OA publishing of academic journals (14 journals) o Partnership between Bibliothèques ULB and Éditions ULB (2008)
• Out of print ULB books re-published in OA
• Book chapters written by ULB authors and published by Éditions ULB available in OA in IR
•
What about the implication in OA journals of our researchers & professors (with
an editorial role)?
Editorial role in OA journals
•
HOW to come to that information?
o
Corpus based on three sources:
1) Online survey for researchers and professors
• 176 answers from 101 different persons (20% with F.R.S.-FNRS
mandate)
2) Universities’ librarians
3) Sample (20%) DOAJ
•
WHO & WHAT?
o
Globally, definite identification of:
• 394 professors and researchers (if DOAJ = 100%: 866)
• 205 academic journals
• 467 implications (editor, editor-in-chief, member of the editorial board,
member of the scientific board, peer-reviewer…)
Editorial role in OA journals
•
Approximately
1/10 researcher from our universities would actively be
involved
(editorial role) in OA journals!
awareness
•
1/5 OA journal has got an IF 2010
•
1/3 OA journal has got an SJR 2011
•
Confusion among the researchers (8% of the online survey answers) between:
o Open Access journals,o Journals accessible thanks to an institutional subscription (traditional model),
o And hybrid journals (= journal for which a subscription is needed to get access to, with some few Open Access articles [because researchers paid to publish them in OA])
real necessity to inform better the researchers of the perversity of hybrid journals
